Heeding to Privacy Concerns, Xiaomi Shifts User Data Out of Beijing

Xiaomi has taken into consideration the massive privacy scares regarding their devices and are taking proactive steps towards addressing them. The company is planning to shift non-Chinese user data out of its Beijing data center. This comes after the directive issued by the Indian Air Force for its personnel, asking them or their families to refrain from using Chinese phones.

The Air Force had cautioned its employees, warning that Xiaomi was secretly sending user information to a secret location in China. Xiaomi has been a favorite amongst the young population because of high spec devices which are available for attractive prices. The buzz around it has led to a figurative stampede to get the device on Flipkart.

One of the most popular phones in India, the Xiaomi Redmi 1S sells out within seconds on Flipkart.

Seeing this accusation by the Air Force could cause trouble for its business in India, Xiaomi quickly went into damage control mode. Xiaomi’s Vice President of International, Hugo Barra wrote a detailed blog post on how the company plans to take on the issue.

Mr.Barra said that the company has been setting up servers in multiple locations and will be moving user data outside China. All international user data will be shifted to Amazon AWS data centers in California (USA) and Singapore. This migration process will be completed by the end of October and will benefit its users in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Taiwan.

It was also said in the post that by next year the company will try to set up a local data centre in India and Brazil itself. This will give users faster access and privacy can be maintained in-country.

The Chinese authorities have been facing heavy criticism for engaging in a man-in-the-middle attack on Apple iCloud account. Considering the interfering nature of that government, it is rather safer to keep your data away from their prying eyes. We have to wait and see if these measures taken by the company offer some good solutions to the concern. People love these irresistible devices, but the importance of privacy cannot be overlooked.